poetical odds & ends

in the past few weeks i’ve become rather inspired to write poetry. it seems my desire to write prose that isn’t related to instagram posts has left me but it will probably find its way back. first is a poem i wrote a couple of weeks ago called “selling the camels”. one of those poems where i saw the first few lines in my mind and the rest followed similarly easily. i wrote it down on a scrap delivery slip to begin with.

selling the camels

funereal tiktokers jostle with tripos toppers, teeny boppers,

and even one or two heartstoppers for space in your heart.

thoughtlines run under oceans, magma but a few microns above to say

“we’re selling the camels”.

in other lifetimes, desolation would be tap-tap-tapping at the door.

how could you bouncing its way around standby menus,

ground control setting all systems to implode.

all that escapes in this one is placidity,

a nod and a sigh borne from what nature abhors.

“i’m sorry, but there’s no-one here who can take care of them.

you understand, what should we do with your share?”

herod would come steaming in on stage right,

a sixth of a spleen smuggled through the nether regions of nazareth.

“well, we’ve got no use for them.”

next is a poem in sets i wrote whilst on holiday. i initially wrote the first section (about paris) as a single poem and then added the other parts three days later. all real stories and sentiments i have held in the past. which is only true for maybe five percent of what i write. writing your life is boring. singing it appears to be a different kettle of fish.

travelogues

i would like to say sorry to the musée d’orsay,

or maybe to the little museum in a former department store,

for accidentally taking a locker key with me.

i believe it was number thirty-seven.

i said i’d keep it with me, but lost it behind the sofa.

you’re welcome to rummage down there if you wish.

you will be accompanied by plumes of dust

and invented memories of jon pertwee.

i enjoyed your collection of hammershøi paintings.

i would like to thank the woman who mans the cloakroom in the trade fair palace.

you seemed rather titillated by my replacement of a button with a safety pin.

try as i might, i’ve never been able to sew a button back on.

i know how to, but by the time i muster up the wherewithal,

i’ve lost the button that would match.

my jacket’s lost one, coloured a strange burgundy, is likely tucked

underneath a cobblestone, trodden on whilst in search of choral music and cheese straws.

i was surprised by your amount of gauguin.

i would like to express my discontent with the national gallery.

your gift shop was rather overpriced.

i begrudgingly purchased many postcards, but at no point did i feel as if

i were getting any sort of deal. i suspect others would agree.

there’s not even a tesco tucked behind trafalgar square anymore.

you’re robbing us blind!

realising the lack of meal deals had sealed my fate.

i have gone native! time to complain about stoke newington.

i admired the room with titian’s noli me tangere for a good while.

i would like to thank the ithra museum in dammam.

i saw your illuminated exterior many times, zooming down highways

littered with construction, hard shoulders, and flotsam jettisoned at 104kph.

the water features in the complex felt slightly parodic,

a building of jerusalem in those parched sands.

better than england’s grey and unpleasant lands,

bespeckling the western main line whilst only existing in accordance

with arcane bylaws, moderating their respective percentages of bristol.

i liked your old manuscripted qurans a lot.

this is a poem i wrote with forty minutes to kill in paddington at the end of may. a station where a strange amount of inspiration always comes to me if i’m not frantically looking for my train’s platform. certainly my favourite london terminus. you can really tell that i’ve gone native. the concept is cribbed from disco elysium. which is kind of cringe to do but it’s the piece of world-building i think about most often. the concept of there being a two millimetre hole in the world is undeniably beguiling.

there is a two millimetre hole in the world

befuddlements about claudio bravo’s place in the world left you whispering,

“is it over now?”

there is a two millimetre hole in the world you can hear screaming.

it’s crying out for love, though it whiles the day away, swaddled below.

a cobalt mine, littered with congolese fingers and belgian malingerers.

everyone knew there was something wrong with it, too many accidents,

but attributed it to the wicked people present.

variously black or white, but in reality a shade of ultramarine blue.

they say not a single person has ever entered it alive, or left it dead.

how can a body fit into two millimetres?

the pre-emptive reply — how can a camel pass through the eye of a needle?

or love possessing the ability to make the world go round?

don’t question it ! it got its poetic licence fair and square.

finally are some translations i did into and out of french of some decadent poems. my french is better than rudimentary but worse than literary. these poems are rather simple but translations of them don’t keep the rhymes. it’s very difficult to keep rhymes between languages so i respect that. but some semblance should be kept if we can help it. i don’t believe these would pass muster in a french exam. although i’d suspect that i’d be caught out due to my refusal to accept the passe simple as a serious tense. i put sanglots in the dowson translation to allude towards verlaine’s poem. i put leafmeal in verlaine’s poem to allude to hopkins. i don’t believe hopkins ever alluded to dowson in his poetry, but if he did, i’d be set on this poetic triangle.

translation of ernest dowson’s vitae sumna brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam

Ils ne sont pas longs, les sanglots et le rire,

L’amour, la haine, et le désir :

Je pense qu’ils n’ont aucune part en nous

Après nous nous éteignons.

Ils ne sont pas longs, les jours du vin et des roses :

D’un flou rêve.

Nos chemin émerges pendant un moment,

Puis il se ferme, dans un rêve.

translation of chanson d’automne by paul verlaine

The weeping starts

Of autumn’s violins

Wound my heart

With a monotonous langour.

All breathless and pale,

As soon as the hour sounds,

I remember the old days’ tales,

And I cry.

And I leave on an ill wind,

Which carries me

To here and to there,

Like leafmeal, if thinned.